Bhagavadgita Pages, Chapters 1 to 18
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Bhakti
Bhakti: devotion to a personal god. The path is Bhakti Marga. Krishna advocates Bhakti Marga for all. Other paths are Karma Marga and Jnana Marga. The purpose of all margas is liberation of the soul and its reunion with its Source, The Absolute. Once reunion takes place, the soul does not take birth on earth appearing in the body of a human, animal, plant and other living things. The slate of karma is wiped clean; the soul involutes into Brahman. Liberation by Karma and Jnana (work and knowledge) are more difficult paths and are not suitable for everybody. Work (Karma Yoga) in Brahmanical term means practice of religious duties according to the prescriptive injunctions of the sastras (Karma Khanda). Tantrics practice this kind of UpAsana (worship). As you see, this is a 24-7 ritual, which is difficult to accomplish for ordinary devotees. Karma (work) has its roots in Dharma, the personal ethical and religious law. When Karma Marga becomes more refined, the practitioner (Sadhaka) may give up the Karma Marga and follow the more difficult path, Jnana Marga. Jnana Marga is for the Yogis who have yoked their body, mind and soul to Brahman. That is a perfect union of man and god. All cannot be Yogis. Performing breath control and postures is not Yoga; that is easy. The proper Yogi has to follow the eight-limbed ramifications to its perfection. Go to the following files for details. BG06 TMTM03.
Lord Krishna says, 6.36: In my opinion, Yoga is
difficult to attain, if the mind is unrestrained. But by control of the mind,
and endeavor through proper means, it is attainable.
According to Yoga Sutras, there are personality types, fit for yoga. You heard about personality types like type A and type B. Yogis studied the minds of people and divided them into five types: Kshipta Chitta (Addlehead, Scatterbrain); Mudha Chitta (Muddlehead); Vikshipta Chitta (Rattlehead); Ekāgra Chitta (Laserhead); Niruddha Chitta (good head). Go to BG04 for more details. The epithets used here are for entertainment only and no insult is intended. The Laserhead and the Good Head are suitable for Yoga or Jnana Marga.
Kshipta Chitta = distracted Mind, absent mind. Mudha = useless, to no purpose. Viksipta = scattered, distorted, agitated. EkAgra = one pointed. Niruddha = restrained. For more details go to BG04
The Mind lake
Chitta is the mind (as a lake) where thoughts rise and fall like waves; these waves in the mind lake are called Vrittis. Every time a thought rises it is a thought wave; there are many thoughts waves rising and falling every minute. Thoughts sometimes translates into actions. When a Yogi restrains the mind he can effectively suppress and abolish these thought waves in the mind lake. The tranquil mind lake without waves is a prerequisite for merging with the Object of meditation. The subject, the object and perception become one, meaning that the tranquil reflecting surface of the mind lake takes the color of object; it is like the crystal taking the color of the juxtaposed object. The Yogi becomes one with One. That is absorption.
Maxim of Wasp and Worm
You (embodied being) are made of your thoughts; what you think, you become: love, fear or hate. The body belongs to that which devours it in life. Time is the great devourer. Avadhuta says knowing that his body, subject to birth, death, and rebirth, does not belong to him; he wanders renouncing all.
A lowly worm is in constant fear of the wasp and thus meditates on the wasp, not knowing when the dreaded fate of sting from the wasp will become a reality. The worm is so possessed of the image of the wasp, that its consciousness is reposed only in the thought and form of a wasp. The worm becomes a wasp in its mind's image. Similarly, an Avadhuta or Yogi is constantly meditating on Brahman, not knowing when The Reality will strike (the blessed event of knowing and transforming himself to Brahman would take place). He thus becomes Brahman himself by dwelling in his mind on Brahman, (when the finality of sting strikes.)
This union (reunion, reintegration, reintegration of the chip into the Old Block, Brahman) is called Laya. Laya = clinging, dissolution, absorption) By laya, the Jiva (individual soul) clings, dissolves and gets reabsorbed into Brahman. Sanskrit Laya and English Lysis are cognate words. This Laya are of three types: Bhakti laya, Karma Laya, Jnana Laya. Raja Yoga is the most difficult path. Patanjali is the formulator of Raja Yoga and lived some 2000 years ago. It is the Royal path leading to Laya. He wrote it in Sutras or aphorisms. It deals with Yoga, mental functions, and many gradations of Samadhi (Intense contemplation of an object so as to identify the contemplator with the object meditated upon; simply becoming one with One or That).
Bhakti Yoga is for everyone inclined to devotion to and close relationship with his Ishtadevata (Deity of one's liking or Personal God). Jnana Yoga is for the one with intellectual bent; Karma Yoga is for the ritualist; Raja yoga is for the disciplined mind with intellectual and scientific bent; Bhakti Yoga is for the devotee who has an emotional approach to God. The devotee assumes the role of a child, a slave, a friend, a spouse in relation to his Ishtadevata. A feminine role towards god is common among devotees of Alvar type. Action generates Karma which is good, bad or neutral. Bhakti Yogis, by their personal devotion, believe that God's grace will erase all Karma and take them into His bosom.
Bhakti seems to have originated in Rg Vedic times. Bhakti movement had taken a detour off the Brahmanical Hinduism. Bhakti Yoga as advocated by Krishna existed before the Bhakti movement in Tamil Nadu. This movement was a response, when Buddhism and Jainism in South India were perceived as an alien metastatic growth in the cultural milieu of Tamil Country. They had to be excised and ousted somehow: that was the view of Nayanars and Alvars, the proponents of Bhakti movement.
Buddhists and Jains monks though they were powerful and had royal support in Tamil Country, were fair game for the Saiva Saint poets. Appar pointedly jabs at the Jain monks for converting him from Hinduism to Jainism, which were the dominant religions in South India in the early C.E. Sambandar (7th Century C.E.) seems to have a particular loathness for the Jain monks for not speaking chaste Tamil or chaste Sanskrit, for mutilating both, for ascetic nudity, and tonsure, and for body odor and halitosis from not bathing and cleaning their teeth. These Jain and Buddhist Monks were new immigrants to Tamil Country from Telugu and Karnataka countries. Being strangers with bad Tamil and Sanskrit, body odor, foul mouth and shaven head, they faced the Brahmins and the country people, who were eager to oust them. This is not entirely true; Cilappatikāram, Tamil epic, was the product of Ilankovadigal, a Jain Monk.